Lili’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“He could probably teach me a few things,” Sam said, trying to allay Lili’s fears of ratting out a friend. “There’s nothing better than a good bear story.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Lili brushed her hair out of her eyes and shifted her gaze toward the road. “That guy, though, he just moved. I’m really going to miss him.”
IT was dark when Sam arrived at the trail crew bunkhouse. She might have had trouble finding the building if the road hadn’t ended there. A park service pickup outfitted with a tall cover and benches in the bed was parked in front of the building. The thick-planked front door didn’t have a conventional knob and lock, just a brass handle and a hasp for a padlock to secure it for the winter. She pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway, inhaling the odors of stale cooking and decades-old dust. “Hello?” she said uncertainly.
There was no answer. The wood floors were no longer level, but that wasn’t surprising in a building originally constructed in the 1930s to house WPA workers. The furniture, a hodgepodge of worn armchairs and scuffed tables and mismatched lamps, looked nearly as old. In the kitchen, dishes had been washed and stacked in a drainer to dry, and in the communal area, magazines, books, and boxes of board games had been gathered into a brick-and-board bookcase along one wall. She had to hand it to Blackstock; he kept his crew in order.
Four doors led off the hallway. The first door on the left had a hand-painted sign above it: EL QUESO GRANDE. Sam smiled, recognizing the Spanish version of the “big cheese.” Tom Blackstock had taken over all four bunks there; one was neatly made, the other three full of papers and notebooks and items of outdoor gear.
In the room across from Blackstock’s, and in the next one down on the left, three bunks were occupied. Various items of male clothing hung from the ends of the beds and the backs of chairs. The swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated lay on one lower bunk. That accounted for the six boys on the trail crew. In the final bunkroom on the right, each of the lower bunks was neatly made up, and the top beds were filled with personal paraphernalia. The girls’ room.
The top bunk on the right was littered with an MP3 player and headphones and a tube of hair gel. Maya’s, Sam guessed. The opposite bunk held a box of tissues, a sketch pad, two romance novels, and a worn black Bible. Lisa’s?
Sam let her duffle bag drop from her shoulder onto the lower bunk, and then reached for the sketch pad. The first drawing was remarkably skillful, a chipmunk on a rail. The next drawing depicted a scene from the bunkhouse’s common room, three youths gathered at the table over a game board, two in the background washing dishes with Blackstock looking on. She flipped that page to find only a pair of eyes staring out from the next page. Creepy; they gave her the same chill she’d felt on encountering the illegal hunter. But all she learned about Lisa was that the girl was quite talented with a pencil.
The Bible didn’t provide much information about Lisa, either. The inside front cover held a puzzling inscription. From your loving family. Together forever. If Lisa had a loving family, where were they? Why didn’t anyone answer the phone at her contact number? Sam thumbed through the pages. A few had been highlighted with a marker. The Old Testament, the line about God giving Man dominion over all the creatures of the Earth. Several more having to do with either God or some ancient patriarch smiting various people for various injustices. Sam had always despised the Old Testament, with all its eye-for-an-eye violence and women-as-possessions attitudes. It was depressing to think that a young woman like Lisa might look to it for guidance.
A corner torn from a manila envelope marked a spot in the New Testament, and she opened the book there, hoping to find a more uplifting verse highlighted. On the brown triangle of paper was written, F. Frazier, P.O.B. 103, Carbonado, WY, and farther down, an address in Seattle.
The scrap marked Psalm 23. The valley of the shadow of death. Sam felt a chill, thinking of what had happened to Lisa. In the hospital, the girl’s body language had hinted that she was not telling the truth, or at least not the whole truth. Did Lisa have a reason to fear death?
She wondered how the girl was doing. Sam dug out her notepad and cell phone. Surprisingly, the phone showed a signal here, although it was only half strength. She punched in the number of the phone in Lisa’s hospital room. After listening to it ring three times, she ended the call. She didn’t want the girl trying to reach for the phone. Why wasn’t the volunteer answering? Was Lisa okay? She called the hospital information line, ended up at some sort of volunteer desk. “I’d like to inquire about the status of a patient, please. Lisa Glass,” she told the young voice that answered.
“Lisa Glass? She’s not—” A voice in the background interrupted the speaker. When she came back, she said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, we can’t give out that information.”
“Look,” Sam told her, “I’m a friend. I work for the park service. I was sitting with Lisa just this morning, and I’d like to know how she’s doing.”
“We can’t give out that information.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s the rules.” Another voice in the background said something, and then the girl said, “It’s the law.”
Frustrated, Sam pressed End. Oh, well. She’d take the Bible and sketch pad to Lisa in the hospital tomorrow. Maybe they’d perk her up, or prompt her to talk. Sam could ask her about the name and address in Wyoming, if those were family members or friends Lisa would like to call.
A squeak followed by the thud of the door drew her attention. A thunder of booted feet proceeded in her direction, no doubt drawn by the light spilling from the girls’ bunkroom. The herd of hulking boys looked her over once again.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
They parted, and the earthy aroma of wood smoke accompanied Maya into the room. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “You’re here.”
“Yep,” Sam said, unable to read the girl’s expression.
The cluster of boys shifted again to let Blackstock through. “I see you found your bunk all right,” he said. “We were out back. We do a campfire circle on days that the weather’s decent; toast marshmallows, tell stories. You should have joined us.”
Ben Rosen rolled his eyes.
“Sounds like fun,” Sam said. Tom Blackstock had a nice touch with these kids, and the group probably provided more of a supportive family than most had at home. “I’ll be there next time. Are s’mores allowed?”
Blackstock winked. “You betcha. You bring the chocolate and the graham crackers.”
“I will,” she promised. “Any word on Lisa? I just tried to call, but the hospital wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Blackstock’s craggy features took on a grim cast. “I talked to Peter Hoyle about two o’clock. He said Lisa’s been out cold most of the day.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But maybe sleep is what she needs most right now.”
At least Blackstock didn’t say Lisa wasn’t sleeping. But where was the line between being deeply asleep and being unconscious? Sam made a mental note to ask the nursing staff about that tomorrow.
“Can we talk for a minute?” she asked him.
He eyed her carefully. “Meet me in my truck in half an hour.”
That sounded like a sexy rendezvous. Then Sam realized that a vehicle was the only place the two of them could discuss anything in private. It was a truck or the woods. She nodded and checked her watch.
Blackstock moved toward the boys behind him, making herding motions with his hands. “Hit the bathroom, guys, so the ladies can have it when Ranger Westin here gets unpacked.”
“Call me Sam,” she said. I’m not a real ranger, her conscience added.
“Call her Sam, then,” Blackstock told them. “But get a move on. We got a long day tomorrow.”
Six young men turned and shuffled down the hall in front of him.
Sam turned to Maya. “There’s only one bathroom?
”
The redhead shrugged. “Don’t worry. Queso makes them clean it up so it’s not too disgusting. And there’s a sign on the door we can flip so they won’t come in when we’re in there.”
Unpacking took two minutes. Sam hung up her spare uniform, dumped out her duffle bag onto the top bunk, and laid out the T-shirt she slept in on the lower one, along with a headlamp and the mystery novel she was reading.
The bunkhouse was dark and Maya was already snoring softly when Sam donned her jacket and slipped out to Blackstock’s truck. The night was turning chilly, not more than fifty degrees out, but the tree frogs were awake and singing nonetheless. Stars glittered overhead in the patches of sky she could see between spires of firs.
The truck cab was nearly as cool as the outdoors. The windshield was already fogging up, and Sam squirmed inwardly, thinking of how this must look from the outside. She wished it was Chase she was meeting on this beautiful night.
Blackstock held out a bottle of whiskey and a paper cup. “Join me?”
“Just a little.” Whiskey was not her drink. It tasted as bad as she remembered, like rubbing alcohol, but the warmth as it slid down her throat was welcome.
“Are you from around here, Tom?” Maybe he’d have an insight about the hostile stares from the locals.
“In the winter I live over near Shelton,” he said, naming a town on the east flank of the Olympic Peninsula. “But I’ve been running trail crew for the park service in the summer for years now. Whether these kids have been in trouble or not, they need someone watching out for them.”
He sounded like he expected an argument from her. “They’re lucky to have you, Tom. Or should I call you El Queso Grande?”
“Tom will do.” He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “You saw Lisa this morning?”
Sam told Blackstock about Lisa’s allegations of kidnapping and rape. As she talked, his expression changed from shock to sadness to worry.
“Of course,” she added, “Lisa could be hallucinating, too; the doctor said that was possible.”
“I hope so.” He took a sip from his cup. “These guys don’t need any more problems.”
Sam looked toward the quiet bunkhouse. “You can account for all of them in there?”
“Joe Choi asked me that yesterday.” He thought for a minute. “Well, I guess there’s always the possibility that any of these kids could slip out after I was asleep, but there’s no way they could start up this truck without me hearing. And there are no other vehicles.”
Sam rubbed a patch of condensation off the window with her elbow and stared out. Nothing but woods for miles around. She wondered if there were illegal tracks blazed through the forest around them. There weren’t enough rangers to patrol thousands of acres. “Think they could meet a vehicle in the woods?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. But how would they arrange it? I’m the only one with a cell phone.”
Sam considered the timing on Friday night. “Did you get the call about the explosion and fire?”
“Nope. First thing I heard about it was midmorning on Saturday.”
So nobody in the bunkhouse had been roused during the night. The boys could have snuck out and back without his notice.
“Lisa drew a picture of one of her attackers,” Sam told him. “It looked like a combination of Ben Rosen and the devil.”
Blackstock snorted. “Poor kid.”
“Lisa?”
“Well, her, of course, but I actually meant Ben.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s got to be the only Jewish kid for a hundred miles. The others give him endless shit about that.”
Interesting. Lisa and her Bible, Ben a Jew. Was there some connection there? Sam knew that some sects were paranoid about Jews, saying they killed Jesus. But then Jesus was a Jew, so that line of thinking never made a lot of sense to her. Then her preacher father naturally sprang to mind, and so did the guilt of not being the devout churchgoer he’d like her to be. It was annoying how those thoughts could creep into her head without invitation.
11
THE next morning, Sam packed up her gear for the day, tossed Lisa’s sketch pad and Bible onto the passenger seat, and headed for the western administration building, which housed the park office closest to her survey area. Arnie Cole was the last person she wanted to spend time with, but as the forest service ranger who had been in charge of Marmot Lake, he was the best source of information about the area’s history.
Because no roads crisscrossed Olympic National Park, she had to drive around the perimeter, from one entrance to another, just like all other park personnel. To make matters more complicated, the coastal section of the park was separated from the mountain area by a patchwork quilt of national forest and private lands. Or it had been until the President created a protected wildlife corridor from the Pacific Ocean to the Olympic Mountains by transferring the Marmot Lake section from the forest service to the park service. The creatures still had to cross the two lanes of Highway 101, though; there was no getting around that. She spotted a doe and fawn grazing among the stumps of a roadside clear-cut. With luck, they’d cross at night, when traffic slowed to a trickle.
She spent nineteen miles cursing a logger who insisted on racing his rig just a few inches behind her tailgate, flashing his lights at intervals as if that would make her drive eighty on the fifty-five-mile-per-hour stretch. The truckers got paid by the load, an insane policy that caused them to hurtle around like NASCAR racers. There was no place to pull over. By the time she reached the administration building north of Forks, her nerves were shot. And it was only a few minutes past nine in the morning.
The National Park Service shared the one-story building with the forest service. Although they were both government agencies, sharing quarters sometimes struck Sam as akin to housing cats and dogs in the same cages. Most Americans weren’t aware that the United States Forest Service was in the Department of Agriculture, with an emphasis on crops, livestock, and a safe food supply; while the National Park Service was part of the Department of the Interior, with a focus on conservation and energy. Transferring the Marmot Lake acreage from the USFS to the NPS meant changing that area’s focus from harvesting to conservation.
Sam waved at the NPS aide on duty behind the counter as she strode over to the forest service offices. She’d just raised her hand to knock on his door frame when Arnie Cole swiveled in his chair and spotted her. “If it isn’t Tiny Temporary Ranger Westin!”
When she was introduced to the rail-thin man ten weeks ago, he asked her on a date. She said no. Since then, he hadn’t missed a chance to heckle her. It was either his idea of revenge or some sort of adolescent courting behavior he’d never grown out of.
She switched off the radio on her belt so she wouldn’t have to compete with it while she talked.
“Sizzling Summer Westin.” Cole leaned back in his chair and raised his feet onto the battered metal surface of his desk. An official-looking form skidded from under the sole of his hiking boot and fluttered to the floor.
She hoped he’d lose his balance and fall over backward. No such luck.
“Steamy Summer, Hot Time Summer in the City, Celebrity Summer Westin.”
This was getting old. “Did you sleep through the harassment seminar, Arnie?”
His smile dimmed a bit. “I’m just teasing. You know that.”
“I guess you’ve just learned my given name.”
“From the TV news, no less. My boss tells me this is the second time you’ve graced the airways. And that you’re downright famous on the World Wide Web. And here I was thinking that you were plain old Sam Westin.”
“Give it a rest. Please.” She perched on the arm of his visitor’s chair.
He gave her a lipless grin. “I’ve been doing research on you. Turns out you’re Cougar Lady. Cat Woman.”
She groaned. He’d read up on the Zachary Fischer story. “It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the media made it sound.”
He
raised his elbows and interwove his long fingers behind his head. “Are you going to do a story on us? Are we going to be on the Internet?”
She slid from the arm of the chair down onto the seat. “In case you missed it, I’m not on the Internet anymore. I’m not writing for anyone now. As you pointed out, I’m a temporary contractor for the park service.”
“What a comedown. From Wilderness Westin. Wild West.”
He would have discovered her “cool” name invented by the Save the Wilderness Fund. “Knock it off, Arnie.”
“Oh, all right.” He retracted his feet and his chair legs thudded into position. “I like your new look, by the way, especially the black stitches. The makeup is from that new line, Bride of Frankenstein, right?”
Ignoring him, she bent to pick up the paper from the floor. He leaned over his desk and rearranged the papers he’d dislodged, staring at her as he tapped pages into alignment. Probably hoping to see down her uniform shirt. “So what’s the tiny temp from Interior doing over here in lowly Ag land? Come to learn something about forestry?”
“I already know how to use a chainsaw.” Sam handed him the page she’d retrieved. “No, Arnie, I’m here to pick your brain. Since we both know what a minuscule area that is, it shouldn’t take more than a minute of your time. What can you tell me about recent activities around Marmot Lake?”
“See,” he said, grinning, “You do need me.” He rose from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back.
“I keep finding tracks made by ATVs and four-wheel drives,” Sam prompted.
“They’re just having fun. See, that’s the problem with the park service. In the forest service, we understand that maybe a guy wants to drive his Jeep or ride his dirt bike out in the trees sometime.”
“Well, there’s not going to be any more of that kind of fun out there.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Tell me about the history of the area.”
“Marmot Lake. When the bigwigs asked which parts of the National Forest they could steal for Parks, I said, please, please, please take anything but the area around Marmot Lake. It’s the pride of the USFS, I told them. Sure, it’s scenic and it’s a natural wildlife corridor between the mountains and the coast, but look at all those big trees just waiting to be turned into two-by-fours.” He gestured dramatically, his arms raised toward an imaginary audience.
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